Liberals taste a fecal matter sandwich on health care
Summary: The problem is there is little liberals can do, just as there was nothing conservatives could do to stop the health bill before. A bill under "reconciliation" needing just 51 votes to pass must go through the Budget Committee, and would of necessity have its money-saving provisions stripped out.
Jon Stewart's famous line about Republicans, telling them defeat "is supposed to taste like a s&@# sandwich," is coming back to haunt liberals in time for Christmas.
Despite rising evidence of growing need for health care equity, Democrats have been unable to craft a compromise that will win the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster.
The latest deal, crafted by five liberal and five conservative Democrats, was shot down over the weekend by Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman (right) who said he will vote with Republicans to filibuster the measure rather than allow an expansion of Medicare.
Talking Points Memo, a liberal news site covering Washington, says there is now "substantial doubt" any bill can pass the Senate, where there is a majority in support of change but a minority that can prevent it. Editor Josh Marshall says Democrats should "kick Joe Lieberman out of the party." Many polled by The Huffington Post agree.
The liberal Daily Kos is even more explicit. Firedoglake says it wants "a hard line response."
The problem is there is little liberals can do, just as there was nothing conservatives could do to stop the health bill before. A bill under "reconciliation" needing just 51 votes to pass must go through the Budget Committee, and would of necessity have its money-saving provisions stripped out.
One move liberals may try is to run primaries against conservative Democrats, as conservative Republicans are running primaries against moderates. That might help close the present enthusiasm gap favoring the GOP, but it won't get a bill passed now.
But some will argue that the 2006 primary of Ned Lamont against Lieberman probably did more than anything to antagonize the former Democratic Vice Presidential candidate. Lieberman won anyway thanks in part to the help of a Senator from Illinois named Barack Obama.
On a more recent edition of The Daily Show, former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe listened to Stewart describe his man's troubles, then said the President "knows how to use a light saber."
Liberals are about to find out whether he does. If the President can't get his top priority through a Senate where he has a 60-vote majority, his Administration is likely to crash and burn, leaving Democrats to hope they can hold 40 strong votes against President Palin.
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Talkback
two words for Lieberman
Last time I checked . . .
If you're going to hurl insults, at least get them right!!
ever heard of metaphor
Ask most Christians, and they will tell
Not ALL scripture is literal...
I'm one for short responses, so a discussion about the infallibility and inerrancy of scripture (and more) can be given at the same web site.
Run Lieberman out of the party?
That is, unless you really are determined to be the Socialist's Democratic Party.
What's good for the teabaggers
And neither do most conservatives.
Not what I meant
The Republican Party is in a different situation. Since they got their clocks cleaned last fall partially because true conservatives stayed home to send them a message about the folly of their big spending ways, they are scrambling to reunite their base. The first step is rid the Party of the RINOs who never met a spending bill they couldn't embrace. I fully support the efforts to return control of the Republican Party back to the fiscal conservatives. After all of these years with the Evangelicals and Neocons in charge (and running the Party into the ground) it is time for a bit of revolution. If that fails, then perhaps it is time for a new Party. If Sarah Palin and Glen Beck can muster the discontented masses who are tired of out of control government, then more power to them. Anything is better than the last administration and the current one.
The patriots have risen
It's time for a strong conservative like Sarah Palin to step in and backed by 65-70 conservatives in the Senate to take our country back in 2012.
Only then real reform can begin!
Sarah?
Screw things up?
You obviously haven't seen
And Palin likes oil as much as Bush & Cheney.
And then there is the 3rd world economic house of cards that they built
that Bush/Cheney built, leading to the Great Recession.
And what do you think Alaska's unemployment rate was before the Great
Recession hit and Palin was GOv? One of the worst in the country.
Revisionist
Alaska has an historically low unemployment rate. Even now it has a rate below 9%, while the national average is over 10.2%.
For the record I do indeed remember the WMD. Saddam used them on the Kurds, the Iranians and probably the Allies in the first Gulf War. He would have used them in the Iraq War, but his scientist neglected to tell him they were unsuccessful in their efforts to complete a nuclear bomb in time. No worry Obama will make sure Iran has plenty of time to complete theirs.
Opinions differ
True, she might turn out to be George McGovern in drag, but we've had some really stupid Presidents in the past and survived.
Let me take this comment out of current events, and just mention two names.
Warren G. Harding. Millard Fillmore.
And two more from among the Democrats.
Franklin Pierce. Andrew Johnson.
And high intelligence is no guarantee of success. See Carter, Jimmy. And for Republicans, Bush, George H.W.
Besides, as Roman Hruska once famously said, the mediocre deserve representation as well. Assuming, that is, that Sarah Palin is not a jedi master in deep cover. Reagan apparently was.
You liberals just can't figure Sarah out.
Palin's appeal is that she is the opposite of the media and political elite. We have had enough of Ivy League elitists looking down their noses at us and talking down to us like us poor bumpkins in Middle America just don't have a clue. Sarah comes across as one of us, an ordinary person. She wasn't born with a silver spoon in her mouth like the Bushes, or an entitlement attitude like the Obamas. Like most of us, she had to work her way up and pay for her own education. Many of us can relate to that.
Besides, she drives you liberals absolutely crazy, so she can't be all bad.
Oh no Sarah is not stupid, she just
Neither is Obama
You mean like....
Better than that empty suit you call your leader
Palin for president would result in a landside